Driving long distances is a big part of Texas life. According to the Texas Department of Transportation, Texans drove 293,352,000,000 miles in 2020, an increase of 1.75% over the previous year. Unfortunately, along with this increase in miles traveled came a worrying increase in accidents, including fatal accidents.
According to the DOT, there were 3,896 traffic fatalities, an increase of 7.54% over the previous year. Combining this figure with the number of miles traveled, this means there were 1.33 deaths per hundred million miles traveled in 2020, a 5.66% increase over 2019. Another 14,656 people suffered serious injury in 12,107 motor vehicle crashes last year.
Human costs
When looking at traffic accident statistics, large numbers can sometimes serve to conceal the human costs. Each one of these bits of data represents a person’s life ended or seriously and permanently changed. And the damage doesn’t stop there. The lives of these people’s families are also irrevocably changed. They face the extremely high costs of medical and rehabilitative care, and lose much of the support and companionship their loved ones provided. In many cases, they lose the income their loved ones provided as well.
Recovering from these blows is not easy, but when these and other damages come as the result of an accident that was caused by another person’s negligence, the injured or their families may be able to recover financial compensation through a personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit. These legal actions can be time-consuming and sometimes emotionally exhausting, but they can also be absolutely essential in giving the injured and their families the financial resources they need to cope with their needs in the next stages of their permanently altered lives.